


the body, made of earth

by kate_button



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Anal Sex, BDSM, Bondage, Established Relationship, M/M, POV Billy Hargrove, Pain, Predicament Bondage, Subspace, kind of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 04:23:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21220511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate_button/pseuds/kate_button
Summary: He needs this in a different way than Steve needs it. It had taken a long time to get them here, get them to this. It’s not something that comes easily to either of them; Steve thinks Billy’s suffered quite enough for one lifetime and struggles a little with inflicting more on him, and Billy just doesn’t go down as easily as Steve does. Billy needs it stricter than Steve needs it, needs more of a push, needs it a little harsher.





	the body, made of earth

**Author's Note:**

> so i don't usually write sub billy. i've dabbled in it here and there in some other fics, alluded to it or touched on it for a scene or two but i've never really written it at any length. the idea for this just kinda popped into my head while i was laying in bed this morning, kicked around in there a little while i did some chores, and then i opened my computer and here we are.

The only rule is that he can’t touch the collar or the leash, and he can’t kneel. There will be more, later, but for now, the only thing he’s not allowed is to straighten up. 

It’s not so hard yet. It’s only been a few minutes since Steve bent him over, clipped the leash to his collar. It’s a short lead, has him bent pretty much horizontal at the waist with it attached to eyebolt in the floor. He can close and open his legs as much as he wants, bend his knees, support himself with his hands if he wants to. 

It’ll get harder. He can already feel the fatigue starting in his legs, the ache starting in his back. They’ve only just started. He takes a deep breath and tries to settle into it, to not fidget too much. Steve will make it harder too.

He needs this in a different way than Steve needs it. It had taken a long time to get them here, get them to this. It’s not something that comes easily to either of them; Steve thinks Billy’s suffered quite enough for one lifetime and struggles a little with inflicting more on him, and Billy just doesn’t go down as easily as Steve does. Billy needs it stricter than Steve needs it, needs more of a push, needs it a little harsher. Steve folds to him with a look these days, so comfortable with what they’ve got that a well placed word will have him glassy-eyed and crawling. He likes being good because he’s eager as fuck to please, and he likes being pushed, but he’s more used to it. It’s easier for him. 

Steve’s not paying him any attention, not yet. Billy arches and bows his back, tries to relieve some of the pain, the tension. It helps, but only for a second. He bends his knees, puts his hands on them, lets them take some of the strain, closes his eyes and drops his head and tries to breathe through it. It helps for a second, but any relief in one place just puts strain on another. It's uncomfortable, almost unbearably so. He has a moment of almost overwhelming need, panicky, to straighten up, to stand or to kneel, a moment where he knows as surely as he knows anything that he can’t do this. His knees almost bend. He digs his fingers into them and grits his teeth. 

Billy has to be more intentional about it. Steve has to work harder to put Billy where he needs to go than Billy does to get Steve there, and Steve has to keep himself together, too, ignore Billy and make him struggle and break him down when his instincts are to protect and comfort. Steve’s good to him. So fucking good to him. But sometimes Billy needs him to be good to him by being mean, by being demanding. 

It’s only when he starts trembling that Steve bothers to acknowledge that he exists at all. He’s sweating and his body hurts. Like, all of it. His legs are shaking a little as he fidgets, shifts from foot to foot, picks one up and rolls his ankle and then does the same thing with the other. His lower back is screaming at him, the muscles around his shoulders bunched and tensed. Steve taps the back of his thigh with two fingers, and Billy sucks in a breath, straightens his legs. 

This is the part where it gets harder. He knows in a few minutes he’ll look back on himself in this moment and think how much better he had it, how naive he is to think that this is bad, is uncomfortable, is more than he can handle. He knows better and so does Steve. 

Steve drags one finger down his spine, smooth slide in the sweat there. He taps the small of Billy’s back. ‘Hands.’

His eyes prickle and he takes a shaky breath. He knew it was coming. He puts his hands behind his back, his trembling legs and aching back and tense hips taking all the strain of being bent as he is, and Steve carefully and meticulously buckles the cuffs around his wrists and clips them together. Billy’s hands immediately bunch into fists, arms tense. He doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until Steve’s big warm hand splays out in the middle of his back, thumb making little circles on his skin.

‘Breathe, baby.’

Billy sucks in a gasping breath. 

They’re not doing this for Steve. This isn’t about Steve wanting him to do this, isn’t about Steve at all. Steve’s doing this for him, and he’s doing it because he needs it and he doesn’t know why, exactly, just that he does. He’s set up to fail, here. This is too fucking much and his body knows it, but he’s stubborn and he’s got something to prove. He’s set up to fail and if he does Steve’s not gonna be even a little bit disappointed, is gonna be proud as hell, gonna pull Billy into his arms and kiss his sweaty overheated skin and not tell him he was good because Billy doesn’t need that, doesn’t need to hear that shit the way Steve does, but will tell him it’s okay because Billy will have a fucking breakdown about it like he does every time they do this kind of thing and he can’t get through it, will tell him he still loves him and that he’s staying and won’t punish him or make him feel bad about it at all.

He’s not gonna fail tonight, though. He’ll fucking stand here as long as Steve makes him, until he’s nothing but pain and sheer stupid determination. He doesn’t give a shit what his body has to say about it. This night isn’t going to end with him collapsing to his knees, sobbing. It’s just not. 

He hears Steve take his clothes off, hears him sit down in the chair across the room. His shoulders scream at him and his legs shake and his back is kinda cramping and he takes another breath through his nose, deep and steady and consciously tries to relax as much as he can. 

It doesn’t take long for all that stubborn determination to wane. There’s a throbbing ache radiating from his collarbones. His fucked up knee is starting to really protest. His shoulders hurt badly enough that his eyes are stinging again and he can’t help twisting his arms a little, trying to find any small relief to the strain on them. There’s none to be found. Not for any of it. There’s nothing even remotely approaching a comfortable position here and that’s the point, really. 

He doesn’t know how long they’ve been at this. Time kinda slips, moves differently like this. 

Struggling makes him panicky, make him anxious and makes it harder not to break, not to give up and go to his knees or tell Steve to let him go, really just compounds how very fucking stuck he is but he _ hurts_, everything hurts and he’s twisting his wrists, pulling against the leash, legs straining to help his back to push him up, straighten him out, and none of it works, doesn’t do shit except push everything except the feel of it out of his head. He shakes, shivers a little, every muscle in his body just wracked with it.

This is the hardest part, the part just before it overwhelms him. If he can push through this part it’ll be fucking bliss, that checked out ecstatic feeling where his brain just kinda shuts off and the pain turns to something adjacent to pleasure, but it’s hard. It’s the hardest shit he ever tries to make himself do. He doesn’t always get there, can’t always make himself do it. 

He rolls up onto the balls of his feet and rocks back, clenches and unclenches his fists, rolls his shoulders as much as he can with his hands pulled behind his back. 

It’d be easier with Steve, easier if maybe Steve came over and put a hand in his hair and his dick in his mouth or something, easier if there was anything at all to distract him from this, anything to push him just that little bit more, to get him over this last little hill, this insurmountable fucking peak, but Steve won’t. Steve knows better. 

The pain kind of all starts to bleed together. It’s not his knees and his thighs and his hips and his lower back and his shoulders and his elbows and his chest and his neck anymore, it's just one endless throbbing aching hurt, everywhere, deep in his bones up through his muscles to the surface of his burning, oversensitized skin. He can’t pinpoint a single point of pain anymore, can’t distinguish between them. There are no clear lines left. He’s frustrated and he hurts and he’s not surprised at all when the sting behind his eyes builds and builds and his breaths get a little quicker until it boils over. 

The crying is fucking transcendent. It’s a balm, a sweet, sweet relief, tension bleeding out of him and slipping down his cheeks as he sucks in big breaths and his knees shake. He sinks into it, doubled over, keeps his feet under him as his thighs burn almost pleasantly and the restraints on his wrists have his limp arms pulling at his shoulders. 

And then he kind of floats. This is the good shit, this is the part that terrifies him, that he chases but not too often because it takes a long time for him to come back from it, sometime fucks him up for days after. He wonders if it feels like this for Steve when he gets that glazed and gone look in his eyes and gets all pliant, gives and gives and lets Billy do whatever he wants with him, wonders how he copes with it as gracefully as he does. Billy doesn’t do this gracefully.

He doesn’t know how long Steve will let him stay like this. Doesn’t know if he’ll be able to keep his knees from buckling, but it doesn’t matter anymore. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if he fails. The expectations are too high, set too high on purpose. He’s not supposed to succeed. He’s supposed to fall apart. That’s the _ point_.

He startles when Steve touches him, ghost of a touch up his flank.

‘Shhh,’ Steve says, reaches down between his legs and taps the inside of his thigh. It tears a little whimper out of him, but he shifts his legs wider just the same. It destabilizes him, makes his legs work even harder, makes his abs work harder and his back work harder just to keep his balance. The tension that had seeped out of his arms comes back, whole body taut as a bowstring, shaking with it. It overwhelms him in waves, sensation too much to name.

Then Steve’s sinking two fingers into him and he bites down so hard on his lip that he tastes blood, swaying, everything in him going into keeping his knees from buckling. Steve fingered him for a long time before they started this, made out with him and got him good and hard and aching and ready to call the whole thing off and sit on Steve’s dick and take what he needed, and Steve back in him now sends shocky pleasure through him, heaps more fucking sensation on top of it all. 

He did ask Steve to fuck him. He has no idea how he’s gonna cope with the reality of it.

Steve sinks in in one long slide and it punches a strangled little cry out of him as he rocks with it. Steve doesn’t help him, tips of his fingers just lightly touching his hips, not supporting him or keeping him still or moving him how he wants him. Steve wants him like this, trembling and sweating and just this side of in pieces. Billy wants his fist in his hair, wants Steve’s hands squeezing bruises into his waist. Steve doesn’t give him any of it. Gives him barely there touches and measured, deep thrusts that fucking ruin him. 

He cries. He won’t come, not like this. It feels good, feels incredible, feels big and devastating and like profoundly perfect, but an orgasm is out of the question. Impossible. He doesn’t even think he wants one.

Steve can have one, though. Will. He fucks Billy kinda slow and really deep, the way he does when he’s really kind of losing himself in it, and Billy can picture him, lip between his teeth, eyes closed, eyebrows creased, fingertips just dancing over his hips, up his sides a little to his waist and back down. He’ll be wanting to hold Billy as much as Billy does by now, but he won’t do it. 

Steve’s good to him. So fucking good to him. 

Time is still doing that slip-sliding thing and he’s real fucking checked out, real out of it, so it kinda feels like Steve fucks him for hours while he shakes and cries and drowns, but it’s probably not that long at all until Steve’s bottoming out and staying there and Billy can feel his dick pulse before he pulls out, pulls out and leaves Billy there like that to shake and cry and drown some more while Steve’s come slips out of him. He doesn’t close his legs because Steve hasn’t told him to. His whole body is a hot tingly achy throb. He doesn’t have much left in him. His skin is burning up and somehow too cool to be comfortable. 

It could be minutes or hours later that he feels Steve’s hand on his back again, he has no frame of reference, no way to keep track. 

Steve wraps an arm around his waist and the other around his chest and holds him tight and says ‘you’re done, baby,’ and then unclips the lead from his collar.

Billy just falls apart. His knees give and Steve catches him and guides him down and gathers him up and holds him so fucking tight and he’s sobbing, big ugly wracking sobs because it hurts, everything hurts so fucking badly and somehow the relief hurts the worst. Steve unclips the cuffs and blood rushes back into his hands and Billy just cries, tries to make his useless body move enough to put his face into Steve’s neck, ends up with his cheek kinda smashed to his chest instead while Steve just kinda curls around him and pets his hair. 

Usually he fails. Usually his knees give before Steve calls it, and it’s okay and he gets to fail and not _ be a failure_, but sometimes, sometimes this happens. Sometimes he fights, pushes himself past the lines he thought were his limits and it fucking breaks him and he comes out the other side anyway. This is harder. It takes longer to recover from this, exhausts him and strips him down and leaves him raw and stinging.

It’s also cathartic as hell. It’s a hard reset, gets him back to himself, back in his power in a way nothing else does, once he’s picked the pieces of himself up off the floor and let Steve help him put them all back together. 

Steve doesn’t carry him to bed because Billy doesn’t let him, lets Steve manhandle him to his feet and then drags himself there with Steve’s arm around his waist.

Steve arranges him on his stomach, pulls the blankets up to his waist and then sits next to him and runs a hand down his back, makes him shiver. 

Steve will knead the tension out of his muscles in a while, when he can handle that kind of touch. 

‘Lay down,’ he says, and Steve blows out a breath and slides into bed next to him. Billy gets a stupid, shaky hand on Steve’s chest, and Steve covers it with his own, squeezes it.

Billy can’t always handle a ton of contact during this part, but he needs something, needs to be touching Steve, needs to know they’re alright, that they’re both alright. He’s not the only one in it, really. It takes a lot out of Steve too. 

‘Thank you,’ he says, slurs, kind of. His voice isn’t working perfectly yet. Steve brings their hands up to his mouth and kisses Billy’s knuckles before laying them back on his chest. 

‘You know I’m in love with you, right?’ Steve says quietly, ‘Like, you know I would do anything for you. You know that.’

‘I know,’ Billy says, gives his hand as strong a squeeze as he can. ‘Still. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

He’ll be feeling this one for days, weeks, maybe. He’ll open his eyes in a little while and Steve will look like the sun, blinding and beautiful and life-giving like he always does and Billy will fall in love with him all over again. 

‘C’mere,’ he says, and lets go of Steve’s hand to wrap it around his waist instead, tug feebly until Steve scoots in closer. Not close enough. ‘C’_mere_.’

He shifts half on his side, hooks a leg over Steve’s and hugs him tight and puts his head on Steve’s shoulder. Steve sighs, tips his head and kisses Billy’s forehead, rubs one hand up and down his arm, holds onto his thigh with the other.

‘I’d do anything for you, too,’ Billy says into Steve’s skin.

‘I know.’

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr.](https://un-buttoned.tumblr.com/)


End file.
